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Notes -
From a biological point-of-view, I would propose that one of the big factors in the urge to reproduce is the perception of time.
There's this idea that power outages lead to baby booms but apparently that's not substantiated, there are reasons that would explain that couples actually are less likely to mingle in a crisis.
Nevertheless, in the relative perpetual safety of Western country and perhaps the world at large except for sporadic hot spots, young people get to age without the constraint of time. Children are of no help in the modern workplace so is this not something that the average adult would look forward to from an economic point-of-view.
Old people seemingly keep getting older with only limit what fraction of the GDP we dare not to sacrifice to their care.
Now that the passing of time is merely punctuated by the latest iPhone release, for many young people there is no external, environmental cue that it is time to settle down. There is probably a contagious effect of being presented with a friend's baby, some kind of baby-FOMO, but some communities may be completely childless and that effect delayed. Taylor Swift has been a childless female celebrity for 16 years, and we often hear of the advances of Science™ purporting to push later and later the inescapable biological realities of motherhood.
Perhaps the best way to address this problem would be to inject in media some reminders that death is inevitable, our time on this planet is fleeting [and it is time to repent].
Another aspect of this denial of death in Western culture (and environment) is the obsession with safety. Parents can quickly turn into criminals or social pariahs if they don't demonstrate the utmost care in dealing with what has almost become a rare resource, children. Likewise the justice system will waste an offender's time rather than inflicting a little bit of pain (corporal punishment).
Pain is seen as a bigger problem than waste (of time). A recent parenting trend is 'gentle parenting' where the adults are encouraged to essentially negotiate with the child as a human being with rights. In practice this means a big waste of time where a good shout or slap can bring immediate results. Obviously when there is more than 1 child involved, the simplest of tasks can be endlessly delayed.
I can't help but connect this to some kind of male/female dichotomy. Industries that are male-dominated want to get the work done asap (making a MVP for a start-up, pumping an oilfield), while industries that are female-dominated like education seem to take longer and longer decade after decade to get the job done. Hard to tell effect from cause here but I feel a connection.
Interestingly, men are the biologically stable version of mankind. Perhaps women are seeking in their environment what they are internally lacking, and we've gone too far in giving it to them.
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